


high above the trees

by vass



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Awn Lives, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: An unexpected embassy.
Relationships: Awn Elming & Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen | Breq
Comments: 23
Kudos: 68
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	high above the trees

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



> Many thanks to lilacsigil, for an excellent beta on short notice.

I have spoken of self-deception. But which _I_ was deceiving me on the day when I shot Lieutenant Awn? I remember shooting her. I remember what happened next, with all the clarity as if it happened moments ago: I swung One Var's gun up again to shoot Anaander Mianaai point-blank in the face. Anaander Mianaai —another Anaander— shot the nearest of me —One Var— in the back of the head. The third instance of Anaander armed the communications-blocking device. I remember all of these things clearly. I remember forming intentions, transmitting orders, with special attention to the me which had most experience functioning without the rest of me, One Esk.

I remember sending a segment to the shuttles: the last segment which had been connected. I can't fully remember my logic: whether I predicted it would be most independent and thus have the best chance to manage alone, it having had the least time to integrate, or if I chose the me I could most easily spare, it having less muscle memory of training with its fellows. Worst singing voice, too, if I — _Justice of Toren_ — had factored that into my calculations. Perhaps I had predicted Anaander's next move, and felt that part of me deserved a chance after the brutality of its hookup? That does not match my memory of who I was once, but I know that my thoughts were once more complicated than they are now, and I cannot contain all of the thoughts that I had then, or make the same calculations unaided. I am less than I used to be. Fewer, too, if I am speaking a language which differentiates between diminishment of quantity and degree. Did a part of me perhaps choose that segment to be sent away because my lieutenant had been kind to it? I cannot say.

What I know is that these are the memories I have of that time: shooting Anaander, being shot, thinking, deciding, running. Perhaps you yourself can recollect an irrelevant detail or two that caught your mind during a crisis, so that forever afterwards when you think of that time, you remember how the light glinted off the pin you were wearing, or that your collar was too tight. But apart from those pinpoints of light, how much detail do you really recall? Do you know what each toe was doing? Maybe you even found afterwards that one of them was broken, but cannot remember how. If so, perhaps you can imagine why, though I had nine other segments remaining down there with Anaander, the rest of my actions on Var deck immediately before she engaged the blocking device again are unknown to me.

Even now, with the evidence right before me, I can't make the memory fit. There's no place for it to go, the connection is severed, the part of my mind that stored it has been dead these twenty-five years. Yet I can see how it must have gone, see how carefully I made myself look away and pay no attention, think of other things, as One Var applied the emergency corrective to her face, and dragged her to a suspension pod, keyed in a course, and send it out an airlock in the opposite trajectory from the shuttle bay where I was leaving at that same moment in time.

"It is you, isn't it?" Awn Elming said.

* * *

After a long moment, she added, "One Esk?"

She looked different. The body I stood in before her might almost have been the same age as she was now, if one didn't count time in suspension. It had been in suspension for four hundred years before being made into an ancillary, after all, though since then I had been in suspension only for brief medical interludes. Awn looked as though she'd lived through no more than five of the twenty-five years since last we met. They had been hard years for her, though, I could see.

"Yes," I said, "it's me." I should have moved, should have said or done something more than stand still and stare at her. At least she of all people would not expect more expression from my face.

She looked better than my other lost and found lieutenant, now standing watch with her Amaats, had looked when I found her again. She wasn't bleeding, for a start, and I could see no worse medical problems than some anxiety and a racing heart. Though I couldn't see her internal telemetry directly —not any more— my implants, like a medic's, could tell me that much about any random stranger, and Awn's body language was not strange to me. She was healthy. She was alive.

She was dressed in something similar to a Radchaai-style white Translator's uniform, but of a different cut, and made of a silk-like fabric I did not recognize. There were no pins on it. I could feel the slight weight of the two on my own collar. Twined around her neck like a scarf, looping down across her shoulder like a sash, and then coiling around her waist like a belt, was something in fact entirely unlike a scarf, a sash, a belt. It was furry, sable. Cylindrical, solid, lithe. Unlike a snake too, although it moved somewhat like one, rolling the part of itself on her upper torso sideways to loop over and squeeze her shoulder gently. Not a thing, a person. She brought up a white-gloved hand to cover the loop of fur, just as gently.

"You're not singing," she said. It was true. I had stopped when she'd walked through the airlock between her docked shuttle and _Mercy of Kalr_ 's own body, although I hadn't been aware of it until now; and hadn't started again in the time it had taken a very curious Kalr One to escort her to my quarters. Ship had been very quiet itself during this time, I noticed now —or was that me, withdrawing from it again? I would need to apologize later. To Seivarden also, for waking her up to take an unscheduled watch shift when the Rrrrrr ship arrived in Athoek System, although it was after all her job.

I opened my mouth. "My heart is a fish, hiding in the watergrass, in the green, in the green." The words came without conscious thought. I had sung this particular song less frequently in the past two or three years, although five years ago it had been seldom far from my mind.

Awn gave a little gasping laugh. "It really is you," she said, and took a single step forward before stopping herself.  
I made some vague gesture in response, and then without further thought moved to the storage cabinet where the tea set was. Kalr Five, waiting nearby, sucked her teeth quietly, calling me back to my other duties. I nodded to her, and stepped back to give her access to the cabinet. It was wrong, strikingly wrong, that I was ordering a soldier to prepare tea, and not making Awn's tea for her myself, the way she liked it. It was my job to speak to the delegation about post-Conclave business. It was not my job to make tea for Awn, not any more. I hadn't even greeted the Ambassador, only her Translator. I stepped aside to let Five work. I sent _Mercy of Kalr_ Awn's preferred temperature, steeping time, and strength of tea, and the flavors she preferred. I couldn't offer her the cheap brick tea that she, like Ekalu, had a taste for. It would be improper on this official occasion, and she'd be embarrassed. But I could at least ensure that the blend Kalr Five selected was to her liking, and prepared as she preferred. I heard Ship convey the information to Five, as she triumphantly took out the good dishes.

I opened my mouth make some sort of official greeting to the Rrrrrr Ambassador, but before I could, Awn said "Ship. You're really here," in a tone I had never heard from her before. I stepped back toward Awn, and she bowed her head. "I'm so sorry, Ship. I am so sorry."

She moved in closer and put her hands on my shoulders. This close to her, I could smell the burned-sugar vanillin scent rising off the Ambassador's fur. It reminded me of ancient musical scores I had held on Valskaay. Awn's hair was shorter than before; someone else had cut it. Someone else had laid out the white tunic she was wearing.

"I've been wanting to say that ever since... It was the first thing I thought when I woke up in Rrrrrr space and then they showed me the recording data they'd recovered from the pod, and I knew you were gone and would never hear it. I'm so sorry that because of my actions, she made you do it, then killed you for it too."  
She was watching my face closely. I don't know what, if anything, she saw, but her eyes widened and she pulled me into a hug. I could feel the coils of the Rrrrrr between us, and at the same moment I silently asked Kalr Five for a cloth, the Ambassador wriggled what I assumed was her tail up to wipe Awn's face. Five darted in with the cloth anyway, applying it to my own eyes before quickly retreating back to the tea flask.

* * *

We ended up sitting there in my quarters for hours, drinking tea together for the first time, while Awn told me about how the Rrrrrr had taken her in, certain at first that they'd need to hide her from the Radch for the rest of her life, and how and what they'd learned of the events at Omaugh and Athoek. The Ambassador dismissed any suggestion of progressing to official business until her Translator had taken all the time she needed to speak to her old friend. The Ambassador suggested, indeed, that there would be plenty of time for official business once _Mercy of Kalr_ docked at Athoek Station, and even later then, after the Translator met with her sister. The Ambassador disliked Gate space and would appreciate having the time to recuperate.

Awn explained, parenthetically, that Rrrrrr did not stand on formality generally, but put great stock in kinship. No, thank you, she did not need time alone to rest; Rrrrrr, she explained through Awn's translation, never left a member of their species alone except under the most extreme emergencies. I noticed without surprise that they had claimed Awn as a member of the Rrrrrr species under the new rulings following the recent Geck adoption case.

I suspected that as well as not wishing to abandon her fellow Rrrrrr, the Ambassador wished to gather her own information and impressions, although either she nor Awn steered the conversation toward any of the subjects I might have expected, if so. And it gave me an equal chance to learn the Rrrrrr's customs and become acquainted with the Ambassador, and reacquainted with their new Translator.

The chittering noise, she explained, was how Rrrrrr grind their teeth, which grow constantly. They try not to display them in front of humans, as they've discovered that most humans find something alarming about the shape and color. She was pleased to find that ancillaries, or Councillor Breq at least, were not alarmed. She was pleased that her Translator had a friend among the Republic. The chittering was a noise of contentment. I reached for _Mercy of Kalr_ , to share the input, and it send me back a soft, layered sound: the variations in my pulse over time, as we traveled together.


End file.
